Computer system administrators want to control the content that is stored on the computer systems (e.g., individual user's managed computers and network server shares) for which they are responsible. There are many reasons for needing control, including blocking certain types of files from being saved, preventing wasted space, organizing files on particular storage volumes for convenience and possibly security, and in general just knowing what is and what is not present on a file system volume.
For example, an enterprise may not want its employees to store large video files on shares on an enterprise server, as this consumes space. Similarly, an enterprise may also want to prevent storage of content such as music files that potentially make the enterprise liable for copyright infringement.
An enterprise or group therein may want only certain types of files on a network share, such as shared files used in day-to-day work operations. With respect to knowing what is on a storage volume, an administrator may want to know when certain files are added to the storage volume, such as to know when a user has installed (or even attempted to install) an executable program on a managed computer that is supposed to have a carefully-controlled set of executables.
At present, there is no known way to control content storage in such various ways, other than by manually inspecting file storage, or applying a utility program to do so, sometime after those files have already been stored and possibly used. While a utility could scan the file system and remove files deemed undesirable or move files where they do belong, doing so is time-consuming as well as after the fact. Such post-storage approaches also would lead to situations in which incorrectly named files or files inadvertently stored on the wrong file share suddenly disappear without the user knowing what happened.
What is needed is a mechanism for administrators to control the content on computer systems and storage volumes according to a policy, in which the policy may be applied in conjunction with the initial request to create a file (including copying the file from elsewhere) or rename a file on a storage volume. Such a mechanism should be sufficiently flexible for administrators to handle the many possible situations that may arise in a given computing environment.